Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

May 5, 2023 8:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks：

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Additionally, please be advised that today’s conference call is being recorded.

I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Slabin, Executive Vice President, Global Investor Strategy. Sir, you may now begin.

Andrew Slabin

Good morning and welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery’s Q1 earnings call. With me today is David Zaslav, President and CEO; Gunnar Wiedenfels, our CFO; and JB Perrette, CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games.

Before we start, I’d like to remind you that today’s conference call will include forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements include comments regarding the company’s future business plans, prospects and financial performance. These statements are made based on management’s current knowledge and assumptions about future events and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them.

For additional information on factors that could affect these expectations, please see the company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission including, but not limited to the company’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and its reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K. A copy of our Q1 earnings release trending schedule and accompanying slide deck is available on our website at ir.wbd.com.

And with that, I am pleased to turn the call over to David.

David Zaslav

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We have had a very busy and productive year thus far. And while we have lots more to do and more to attack and we are aggressively doing just that, the diversified nature of our company continues to provide a strong foundation that enables us to weather challenging environments, like the one we are in and still generate meaningful free cash flow.

We expected the marketplace to be challenged. And with clear eyes, we remain confident in our strategy and our ability to generate free cash flow and end this year below 4x levered with our streaming service as a tailwind. Gunnar will take you through the specifics. But for some perspective, on a trailing 12-month basis, we generated $2.1 billion in free cash flow, even after absorbing $1.2 billion in cash restructuring and merger-related costs.